Silver Adept (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
silveradept) wrote2014-12-10 12:51 am
silveradept) wrote2014-12-10 12:51 am
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December Days 10 - XII, Slump (The Hanged Man)
[This is part of a series exploring the Baseball Tarot. If you would like to prompt for a part of the game or a card from the deck, there's still plenty of space. Leave a comment with a prompt. All other comments are still welcome, of course.]
This is for DawnM, who wanted to know more about The Hanged Man.
Most Tarot decks that stay with the Rider-Waite type imagery present the Hanged Man as being hung upside-down by a foot, a much less grim scenario than one might expect with the card's name and the history of hanging as a form of execution. The upside-down hanging is intended, I think, to indicate a popular idea that Odin hung himself from the World Tree as a sacrifice to gain the runes - upside down and wounded. Someone with greater familiarity with the Eddas can probably correct me on this.
The Rider-Waite imagery also invokes the bringing together of the elements of fire and water in one entity, and the form of hanging might indicate the degree of difficulty involved in doing so, or that the knotting up is fixed through this balancing act and the Hanged Man only had a little way to go.
In all cases, the Hanged Man is about the search for wisdom by bringing things back into harmony and balance. When turned to a baseball context, there's one scenario where it's obvious that things are out of balance, and players, coaches, commentators, and fanatics can all see it - the Slump.
The slump is an embodiment of nothing going right. Where Batting 1.000 is the pinnacle of plate mastery, the slump is not just being an easy out, but being a pathetically easy out - swinging the bat at pitches well outside the strike zone, letting pitches that should be hammered go by, or worse, making them into piddling pop flies and double play ground balls. And a slump isn't characterized by a single bad night - slumps go on for games without relief.
Most players see their first slump in their sophomore season, when they find out that pitchers do study film and get analysis on how best to get the batter out, and the player hasn't quite picked up being able to know when good pitches are coming versus bad ones when the pitcher knows your tendencies and can exploit your habits. A sharp drop in average and production usually indicates the presence of the slump.
Teams can suffer from slumps as well, where the pitching and defense commit errors, walk batters, hand out hits and home runs as one might hand out popcorn at movie night, and generally build an impressive losing streak while everyone tries to head back in the right direction.
Once of the really pernicious things about slumps is that players will often try all sorts of things, mechanical or superstitious, to try and break the slump and get back on track, and trying those things had a decent chance of prolonging the slump rather then fixing it, because it keeps the player's brain out of the game. All the training to make good fundamentals automatic is being superseded by an anxious brain trying to adjust things on the fly. In truth, that player is probably overthinking things too much.
If you're the player in the slump, a trip to the hitting coach is mandatory, and that particular session of BP is going to last until they're satisfied that whatever's gotten into your swing has gotten out again. The more honest you can be with the coach about what's going on, the faster the session will go. Because they will tell you what they see is wrong, but it's up to you to find the way to implement the suggestions they give. And if there's something mental going on in your game, then they need to know that, too. Once you're back in balance, it will be possible once again to do the thing that you have trained to do for so long for long enough to get yourself a hit. And then after the first one, the slump starts to fade and more hits happen, and soon enough you're back in business. Even for teams, the advice is the same - focus on doing the fundamentals soundly and the rest will follow. And eventually, your team will be on the top of the division, instead of at the bottom.
This is for DawnM, who wanted to know more about The Hanged Man.
Most Tarot decks that stay with the Rider-Waite type imagery present the Hanged Man as being hung upside-down by a foot, a much less grim scenario than one might expect with the card's name and the history of hanging as a form of execution. The upside-down hanging is intended, I think, to indicate a popular idea that Odin hung himself from the World Tree as a sacrifice to gain the runes - upside down and wounded. Someone with greater familiarity with the Eddas can probably correct me on this.
The Rider-Waite imagery also invokes the bringing together of the elements of fire and water in one entity, and the form of hanging might indicate the degree of difficulty involved in doing so, or that the knotting up is fixed through this balancing act and the Hanged Man only had a little way to go.
In all cases, the Hanged Man is about the search for wisdom by bringing things back into harmony and balance. When turned to a baseball context, there's one scenario where it's obvious that things are out of balance, and players, coaches, commentators, and fanatics can all see it - the Slump.
The slump is an embodiment of nothing going right. Where Batting 1.000 is the pinnacle of plate mastery, the slump is not just being an easy out, but being a pathetically easy out - swinging the bat at pitches well outside the strike zone, letting pitches that should be hammered go by, or worse, making them into piddling pop flies and double play ground balls. And a slump isn't characterized by a single bad night - slumps go on for games without relief.
Most players see their first slump in their sophomore season, when they find out that pitchers do study film and get analysis on how best to get the batter out, and the player hasn't quite picked up being able to know when good pitches are coming versus bad ones when the pitcher knows your tendencies and can exploit your habits. A sharp drop in average and production usually indicates the presence of the slump.
Teams can suffer from slumps as well, where the pitching and defense commit errors, walk batters, hand out hits and home runs as one might hand out popcorn at movie night, and generally build an impressive losing streak while everyone tries to head back in the right direction.
Once of the really pernicious things about slumps is that players will often try all sorts of things, mechanical or superstitious, to try and break the slump and get back on track, and trying those things had a decent chance of prolonging the slump rather then fixing it, because it keeps the player's brain out of the game. All the training to make good fundamentals automatic is being superseded by an anxious brain trying to adjust things on the fly. In truth, that player is probably overthinking things too much.
If you're the player in the slump, a trip to the hitting coach is mandatory, and that particular session of BP is going to last until they're satisfied that whatever's gotten into your swing has gotten out again. The more honest you can be with the coach about what's going on, the faster the session will go. Because they will tell you what they see is wrong, but it's up to you to find the way to implement the suggestions they give. And if there's something mental going on in your game, then they need to know that, too. Once you're back in balance, it will be possible once again to do the thing that you have trained to do for so long for long enough to get yourself a hit. And then after the first one, the slump starts to fade and more hits happen, and soon enough you're back in business. Even for teams, the advice is the same - focus on doing the fundamentals soundly and the rest will follow. And eventually, your team will be on the top of the division, instead of at the bottom.